Vent: my own (unfair and unsolicited) anger
WARNING: This is not an upbeat post.
A few weeks ago, my mom called with another of those calls that begins something like "Do you remember the Lewises? There was one in your class, Susie, or maybe the year before or after you, I'm not sure which?"
My response: "Uhhmmm, maybe if I saw a picture?"
Usually this leads into an update on the older/younger brother/sister (or alternately the parent or spouse) of the aforementioned former "kinda" classmate of mine, or of my brother's. Sometimes this is health news (lost a foot in the first Gulf war) or social news (divorced! third marriage! had triplets!--not all at once, of course) or sexual orientation news (a big --and recurring--one: didn't you always think that guy so-and-so dated was gay? Well, he came out) or job news (that boy you dated, he's now at that big computer company, and your old babysitter's little brother's wife works at your nephew's former daycare) .
And I care, I do. It's one of the oddities of my family all being (still, for my parents, and back, for my bro and SIL) in my hometown while I haven't lived there in decades. I've forgotten most of these people I knew in high school, but my family runs into them, or stories of them, and it's strange and pleasing and somehow obliquely fitting, I think, to hear this indirect current of ongoing community.
But sometimes it's just awful.
Most recently, my mom called to say that a kid I did remember, one who was quiet and nice and whom I wouldn't have guessed I'd immediately be able to place and visualize, had died. He killed himself, hung himself, as soon, essentially, as he was released from a 3 day suicide hold (post-attempted overdose) at an institution in the state where he and his wife and two twin toddlers lived.
He'd been struggling with work problems, and had had an organ transplant some years before, and the anti-rejection meds weren't going so well, and so on and so forth.
But it made me so angry--at him, unfairly, I know: what do I know of his day to day life?
But he left behind a wife and two little little kids, kids who won't know their dad, a wife who'll have to parent on her own, plus he did it at home, so a member of his extended family--my mom thinks his mother-in-law, had to find him... and he did it in a way that has to traumatize anyone who sees him after.
I thank every god I can imagine that I cannot imagine G ever doing such a thing, but as a parent I am so angry for his kids.
(And for his mom, who donated the damn organ to him, who is deaf and going blind, whose *expletive omitted* husband left her some years ago, who I know cannot be much comforted just because she has three remaining living children.)
Look, I accept that when you are in despair, or pain, emotional or physical, suicide may in some cases seem a good choice. And maybe even your partnership responsiblities may give way to this.
But my gut says that once you have small children you don't get to put yourself first in such a dramatic way. You don't get to walk out on them. No matter how much it hurts, you don't voluntarily leave them without one of their parents.
I am probably even more angry for this because last year, another guy was the subject of another such "dead-too-young" update, though this time not a suicide. He was, coincidentally, both the son of friends of my parents and an alumnus from G's college (same year), as was his wife (though G and I had never met him or her), and he died at the hands of a drunk driver when his first and only son was six weeks old.
I still grieve for him, this man I never met, and his wife, and his parents, and his son. Once in a while, now, months later, when Otter says a new word or giggles at a Sesame Street song or falls on his butt and picks himself up, determined and undaunted, I think of how much that father is missing.
I am stunned that parenting has become my first filter for the world, now, every death of someone my own age leaving me mourning for their parents, every death of someone with children leaving me imagining the children growing up without a father or mother, every death of a child leaving me feeling both horrified and grateful, blessed that Otter is here and healthy.
So I am angry today, angry that some of us leave our children and our parents unwillingly, too soon, and yet others choose to leave their families behind, in what today I see as abandonment, willingly trading the suffering of your parents, your friends, your siblings, your partner, your children, for an alleviation of your own pain.
I know that's not fair of me, I do.
I know there's always more to the story.
I'm still angry.
And more than that, sad.
posted by cat19 | 1:45 PM
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